Monday January 16, 2006(Audio) Homily by Fr. Robert AltierSecond Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (1 Samuel 15:16-23)Gospel (St. Mark 2:18-22)

In the first reading today, we hear something that is exceedingly
important for all of us, that is, the directive of the Lord when He is teaching
Saul about the situation he had gotten himself into. The Lord says to us, Obedience
is better than sacrifice, and submission than the fat of rams. For a sin like
divination is rebellion, and presumption is the crime of idolatry. Most of us would not necessarily think that
way. Here Saul was thinking he did something great. He took all of the things
that had been banned, which means they were supposed to put to death all of the
sheep and the oxen (they were not supposed to take anything for themselves of
the gold and silver and so on; all of that stuff would be under the ban), but
what he did was to take the best sheep and the best oxen and offer them in
sacrifice, basically saying, “We’re going to offer this to God in thanksgiving
for the victory.” It sounds like a pretty good thing to do, a rather pious
gesture, something that should be very pleasing to the Lord – except that it
was disobedient to God. Is God going to be pleased that he offered sacrifice
from the very things he was supposed to have put to death? And so even though,
on the one hand, his heart was in the right place, the reality was that he was
being completely disobedient.

In that disobedience, we see that there are a couple of different
points. Number one, we have the point of the presumption. That is a point many
of us will fall into. We just presume on God’s mercy. It is the idea that “I
can just go to Confession, and God will forgive me. So it’s no big deal if I
commit this sin; I’ll just go to Confession afterwards.” Well, that is presumption,
and the Lord makes very clear in this reading that presumption is a sin of
idolatry. So it is something we need to completely reject.

We also hear that divination is rebellion. And we also hear in the Old
Testament that divination is as witchcraft, because that is what it is. When we
think about that, it is a problem that people today are falling into left and
right. Everybody is calling psychics on the radio and on the television to try
to get information, reading horoscopes, checking out all kinds of bizarre ways
of seeing if they can get some sort of knowledge. That is all divination. It is
witchcraft and it is rebellion against the Lord. Yet what we wind up doing is
not even assuming that it is presumption. Most people these days do not even
think it is a sin! It is exactly what Saul did. It is something which is
completely forbidden by the First Commandment, and it is all mortal sin. Yet
people think it is perfectly all right, but it is exactly what Saul did.

We try to justify ourselves into trying to say that something which is
completely wrong is okay. Why? Because we were not trying to do anything evil.
“After all, I just wanted to talk to the psychic to find out what happened to
this person or that person.” Well, it sounds like it might be okay, but it is
not. “We just wanted to find out by going to a palm reader what was going to
happen with my life.” It is not okay. “I just wanted my cards read; I just
wanted the tea leaves looked at.” It is all forbidden. These things are
witchcraft; they are divination.

I am fascinated by the fact these days that Satan has come up with an
unbelievable number of things just in the last few years that have never been
heard of before that fall into this same category, and people are flocking to
them. It is interesting if you go to the hospital these days. Try to find a
Catholic chapel or ask for one, you know what you can find? People who are
doing alternative healings, which are all demonic. Yet this is being
encouraged. You cannot pray with anybody because you might offend somebody, but
you can bring somebody in to call on your energy fields or your chakras or they
can wave their hand over you and do some kind of weird form of healing. That is
okay. It is okay to call on Satan, but it is not okay to pray to the Lord. This
is witchcraft and it is purely demonic. You can see exactly why God would
forbid it. Yet so many fall right into the category that Saul fell into. They
do not have any bad intention; they were not trying to call on Satan to see if
they could get healed. “After all, the person who came in to do this was real
nice, so that’s all that matters” – no it is not. We need to do what is right;
we need to be obedient to the commandments of God.

The Lord makes very clear that obedience is better than sacrifice, that
divination is rebellion and presumption is idolatry. These are sins that are
multiplying greatly in our culture, and we need to make sure we do not fall
into them since it is getting easier and easier to do because, as the saying
goes, “everyone else is doing it” and there are so many more opportunities for
it. We need to make sure that we keep our focus proper, and that we are going
to serve the Lord – not the way we think He wants to be served, but according to the
way He has made clear that He wants to be served – and to make sure that
obedience is at the very foundation of everything we do because obedience and
humility are the things that will give to God the greatest glory.

e is telling us, Thisi s what I want, but I
want

*This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.